


Night Lights

by lousy_science



Category: Creed - Fandom, Rocky Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon May Joss This, F/M, Gen, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 11:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15217868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: A little late night woolgathering by Donny, because the Creed II trailer has me feeling things.





	Night Lights

Sleep. Adonis had thought about sleep like a starving man thinks about food. It was like one of those cartoons with a guy crawling through the desert, seeing a glass of water, and then having it turn out to be a mirage and there’s really a vulture waiting to pick out his eyeballs. 

After all the promises he'd made to himself about sleep, the sleep that everyone else agreed he needed - Bianca had even taken the baby to her mother’s to make sure he got some rest - now, he was just lying on his back looking at the shadows on the ceiling. Thinking about vultures, wondering who was coming for his eyes.

A car drove by the house, and a murmur of the headlights shone across over the roof beams. They had blackout curtains put in, ostensibly so he could sleep undisturbed, but he’d never really liked them, which is why they were slightly open. When he first went to live with Mary Anne she’d left the lights on in the hallway outside his room. He’d always known that he could get up and leave if he’d wanted to. That helped, in the early months, when juvenile hall was still a fresh memory. Guess it was still fresh in some part of his brain.

Bianca both didn’t get it (“Why are these open, D? You don’t understand the concept of how darkness works? Guess they didn’t cover that at private school.”) and indulged him, leaving them open just a crack before she left. 

That was what a good relationship was, being able to accept a degree of the other person’s crazy. Only the harmless crazy, like leaving blackout curtains open because even though you spend a bomb getting them custom made, you realised you needed a little light. Or putting containers back in the fridge with the lids only half-closed, which Bianca did all the time. Drove him up the wall when he got milk splashed all the way down his shirt because he’d assumed, like a normal person would, that the top would be fastened on correctly. 

He caught her at it eventually. They were in the kitchen making up some formula. Donny was fiddling with the settings of the dispenser and he heard her put the cap all the way on a bottle, then un-click it half a turn. All he could do was stare at her hands, fastening and unfastening the bottle as she was talking about studio time, and then she opened the fridge door to stick it inside and he had to call her out. 

“What are you doing?”

“Doing?”

“You screwed it on, then took it off again!”

She looked at him like he was crazy, then looked down at the bottle . “Oh.”

Bianca’s grandmamma had bad arthritis. Bianca had moved in with her for a year to help out, had got in the habit of keeping lids loose because it was easier for Granny Berry to handle. Donny never got to meet her, she died eight years ago, but he knew what she looked like because Bianca always kept a picture of her hung up in the kitchen. 

They both had their stuff. Donny was more than happy to spend the rest of his life properly screwing on bottle caps and Tupperware lids, if in exchange he got Bianca’s big eyes and her impeccable bullshit detector. He missed her, even though he’d gone along with the idea of her crashing at her moms in order to give him this night off. He’d rather be pacing the baby’s room with a fussy eight-month-old than lying here listening to nothing. 

Being a parent made you hyper-aware of sounds. Bianca was already there, of course, but Donny had no idea how alarming a rustle could be. He lugged that baby monitor all over the house. If he had his way, there’d be a closed-circuit camera above the bassinet, but both Mary Anne and Bianca had shut that idea down. Said he was inviting more stress into his life, not less. 

He complained about this to Rock, who got it. Donny knew he missed Robert, who’d become an accountant of all things, and lived in the most boring-ass suburb in the most boring-ass suburban house you could imagine. Bianca had gone along with him on a visit and whispered to him that they’d been beamed up to Planet Wonderbread, and he’d had to pretend to cough to mask his laughing. Robert was alright, though. Cold. His grief over his mother ran deep, but unlike Rock he kept it all way down inside. Donny kept inviting him to fights, and his wife kept leaving incredibly polite refusals on voice mail. Bianca had been surprised when a generous baby shower gift arrived from them both, a whole basket of brand new baby stuff, and they'd shrugged at each other then sent along the requisite new parenting pictures.

Rock had theories about modern parenting that he was more than happy to share with Adonis, who filed them away with a bit more generosity than he did most parenting advice. Along with Mary Anne, and Bianca’s mom, Tamari, he was the other grandparent. Adonis’ name was his emergency contact. Rock didn’t ever need to know how much Donny worried about getting that phone call. 

His phone was in the other room. One of Bianca’s pronouncements, that he should sleep in a room with no electronics. She had let him keep the baby monitor around, even though it was switched off. On his phone there was a fifteen-minute MP3 she’d mixed for him of happy baby sounds. Donny didn’t ask for it, it just arrived as an AirDrop file one day on his way home from training. He liked to listen to it during cooldown.

They didn’t know what Bianca’s hearing would be like in the next few years. Which is why Donny let her fuss around with microphones and recording equipment in the baby’s room, getting all these sounds stored. Even baby screams, which was the worst goddamn sound in history, and Donny once heard the sound of his own cartilage ripping. He never asked why she got the mics and he didn’t get the closed circuit camera, because he knew the stakes were higher for B. 

That afternoon he’d been pushing iron, trying to concentrate on his grip and not on the thought of sleep. Just a few hours ago, and yet now his brain seemed to be wide awake. Maybe he should go downstairs and crank out some reps. Maybe he should get a glass of water, or chocolate milk. Maybe he could call Bianca, ask her to hold the phone up to the baby’s mouth so he could hear that reassuring in, out, in breath. 

He flipped over a few times. Replumped his pillow. Remembered how much they’d spent on the mattress. 

Forcing his eyes closed, he moved his mind away from the empty room, with the crack in the curtains and the quiet baby monitor. He was roped off, in a ring. The ring, the one the match would take place in. No one else was there - the crowd had disappeared, and the stool on the opposite side was vacant. It could be the end of the match, or way before it. Everything was dark except for the white square, no logos, just clean canvas. 

The ropes were at his back. He was sitting down, a towel around his neck, but he wasn’t sore, his skin didn’t have beads of sweat. There was no one else there - but then there was a voice. It was Rock, talking to him from the right side, where he’d be standing in the fight. 

“Just let it go, Donny. 

You can let it go now.

It’s time, man.”

The words sounded like they were far away. He looked down at his hands, not in gloves, not wrapped. They were tightly gripped. Back in bed, he checked in with his body, and found his hands formed into fists. In the visualisation, he uncurled them, and did so in real life. 

“That’s good, son.

You’re doing well. 

We’ll see you in the morning. 

Everyone will be there. 

Don’t worry right now.”

Adonis breathed, in, out. In, out. The white canvas got blurry at the edges, softening up. It wrapped around him like a cloud and down, down, he floated, into the stillness, on the way through to the dawn. 

**Author's Note:**

> Like always, this is for A.


End file.
